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domagoj miskovic
domagoj miskovic

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Return to Haskell

I am in and out of functional programming often but each time I come back to it sooner than later, something new is released, something in my overall thinking patterns seems transformed, I feel lighter than I have always been, it feels like cleansing, purifying, being closer to the core. What I mean to say, and there are many ways to say it, is that within this hollow sphere of real world ephemeral things, just witnessing all kinds of hurtful, repetitive, manipulative, angry real life words, I am truly fascinated by the cool expressions Haskell programmers use to describe their code,

Combinations of words that in themselves are not the destination but a point of departure, a description of a possible map of collective interactions, compositions which consist of pure enviless functions, mathematical transparent like objects, which are just so much more than complicated one time operational commands we are ordered to do, like everyday life feels like living sometimes, they remain outside of the computer realm of moving bits and bytes around and engage our humanistic minds into a careful observation of all that is involved, into actually learning to define what is the problem we are trying to solve, a method of how to say more about what.

There is also this underlying vibe of emptiness at work in the sense that as we are thinking functionaly one is immediately becoming aware of how much habitual thinking there is in the mind, of how many seemingly different commands merely point towards do this do that until you do that, and then again, you must enter the object and learn a new operational language and do the same thing all over again, find new meaning for same old words yet again, like doing a different but stupid kind of job where your hands are tied and they tell you its all your fault, just do this and do that, and things cant change because we dont care.

On the other hand functional approach is mathematical in its essence, a purely algebraic form of reasoning. Remember crossing xss and ys in school, doing equations, remember that one time in early years of school genesis when some parts of math, like early algebra felt like playing with emptiness in space, I do, and I remember others too. But also, and this is what keeps bringing me back to Haskell, even though I am not a professional programmer, nor have I ever worked as one, and even though friends recommend me to start with python, doh, becoming meditative and learning to program a functional language, just for the fun of it, calms my mind, liberating it from within, each new functional expression is a movement towards the inner realm, towards understanding my self again and again. And along the way I learn to discard old meanings again.

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